Sigmar Polke

Sigmar Polke’s wildly inventive practice helped pioneer new approaches to painting and photography in the post-war era. Polke was both materially inventive and conceptually oriented: He used a variety of photographic printing techniques and chemical processes and worked in a vein he called Capitalist Realism, which took an ironic perspective on consumerism. To this end, he often incorporated pop cultural and advertising iconography into his work. Polke has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Kunsthaus Zürich, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. He participated in the São Paulo Bienal and the Venice Biennale, winning the Golden Lion in 1986 for his presentation at the West German pavilion. Polke was awarded the Erasmus Prize, the Carnegie Prize, and the Praemium Imperiale, among other honors. The artist also worked in printmaking, film, performance, and sculpture.